The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: William Blake and His Contemporaries

William Blake was an outstanding figure in British art and literature. Overlooked in his lifetime, the artist inspired generations with his visionary works, prints, watercolours, oil paintings and, not least, his poetry and prophecies. After two hundred years, his art is known to the world as a unique expression of the free spirit. This exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, is a selection of works from the Tate collection, which presents the poet and painter’s most important works in the context of a traumatic period in British art and history. Blake’s enduring images alongside works by some of the artists who inspired him most, including Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West and John Hamilton Mortimer, providing a partial insight into a historic moment of originality and innovation in British art. The thematic sections of the exhibition include; Magic, Fantastic Creatures, Horror and Danger, Gothic, Romance of the Past, and Satan and the Underworld, each theme is based around a key work by William Blake, in which different dimensions of Blake’s multifaceted imagination are revealed. In each section, the established artists of the Romantic period (William Turner, Samuel Palmer) will be shown to reveal the prevailing artistic trends through their seminal works.